Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1883 — SOME BIG MELONS. [ARTICLE]

SOME BIG MELONS.

X was talking with an old planter in the Arkansas bottoms about watermelons, and he threw away his “chaw" and remarked: - ~ ~ “Wall, I dunno. I was inter w&termellyons four seasons, and I lost money.” “Didn’t yon have good crops ?” “Right thar was the trouble, sir,” he replied. “The fast year I kinder let the niggers run the business, and ffl be chawed, sir, if six or eight of ’em didn’t break their backs lifting them ar mellyons into carts to tote ’em to the landing! I’ve got six cripples for life to take car’ of on account of that crop.” “And the second year?” “Well, I run the patch myself the second year. I thought I’d see what old Crittenden county could do when she had a fair show, and the result was party nigh what you call a calamity. I picked out 1,000 mellyons for shipment to Cairo, and it took six niggers and a span of mules to git each one down to the landing. I had ’em all sot up in a row, ready for the steamer, when along cum a lot of refugee niggers from the bottom lands and squatted on me.” “How?” “Why, every head of a family preempted one o’ them big mellyons for a cabin and went to keeping house inside of it as grand as you please. ” “You don’t tell me!” “And to show the ingratitude of the race let me tell you that they took the seeds and dumped ’em into the river right thar’ and started a sand-bar which obleeges the boats to land three miles further down the river. I reckon thar’ might be money in mellyons if you could git ’em up North, but you can’t stand around with a shot-gun and tell a nigger who has been overflowed out that he can’t come the cabin dodge on you. You see, it’s kinder human natur’ to feel sorry for ’em.— M. Quad.